The Schwab Foundation is a sister concern organization of the World Economic Forum. The Foundation provides unique regional and global platforms to promote social entrepreneurship as a key element to advancing societies and addressing social problems innovatively and effectively.

Programs

Our Approach

JBF understands that the lack of education is a root cause of various social and economic problems and therefore, the foundation believes that the education should be the primary area of intervention for empowering the communities. In this regard, Project Muskaan was introduced in 2007 to support the Government initiatives in primary education. The project has been named ‘Muskaan’, as it aims to bring smile on every child’s face. It’ primarily aims at improving the learning environment and the quality of education in the select schools so that students are motivated to attending school and ultimately cutting down the dropout rate. The project now reaches out to 13000 students through 100 rural government primary schools in the vicinity of Jubilant’s manufacturing locations.

Mode of Action

Outcome

The project was initiated with a structured approach involving focused steps:

Advocacy with the District Administration and Block Level Education Authority

Sensitization of all important stakeholders including teachers and parents, trainings and workshops are conducted for Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) members and the opinion leaders

Implementation involving a series of steps including restructuring of the School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) admission drive, tracking left outs, drop outs and attendance, motivating the parents to send their wards to the school, various innovative schemes are taken up including recognition and rewards. For improving the school environment, cleanliness and plantation drives are taken up involving students, events like birthday celebrations, reading out important news, recognition of good work done etc Trainings for teachers are arranged at regular intervals and activity based teaching modes are encouraged through interesting teaching aids to bring in gradual improvement in the quality of teaching in the school.

Sustainability – Community involvement and monitoring mechanism to track improvements would help towards long term sustenance of the initiative.

Replicability

The project was started in the pilot school at Gajraula

With an understanding that both learning environment and quality of education go hand-in-hand, the foundation has worked with the local communities and school authorities on improving the environment(infrastructure, maintenance, quality books, hygiene factors etc.) and quality (training of teachers, learning methods of children, and additional extracurricular activities). Since inception, JBF has been actively assisting to initiate a change in the overall scenario of education in rural government primary schools. In the second phase however, having established and made progress in improving matters, the foundation has set a routine of monthly activities for the whole annual calendar year. This is an attempt to increase and improve the learning abilities of children in the government schools the foundation is working with.

The idea of the Muskaan activities on a monthly basis is to take baby steps to reach the bigger goal of bringing change in reading, writing and speaking abilities of children. Most of these children in government schools in rural villages are faced with the challenge of proving their capabilities in these three areas (reading, writing and speaking) and more than usual lose out with their counterparts in private schools in villlages or cities. The inability hampers further their chances of making a decent yet significant improvement in their overall life. Coming from humble backgrounds makes it difficult for them further to take tuitions or extra help.

The ‘Muskaan Project’ and the idea of the monthly activities is a small step to fulfil the bigger goal of helping these children to gain confidence and better their ability to read, write and speak